


The Sweetness on Our Tongues

by brieflybe



Series: the lights we chase [2]
Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Mentions of homophobia, mentions of depression, mentions of past drug addiction, mentions of prejudice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-04-23 16:34:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14336583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brieflybe/pseuds/brieflybe
Summary: "I was trying to get us passports." Simon's voice is hoarse. He seems smaller, and Kieren fights off the urge to tell him that everything's alright. That he can't stay mad at him, really, so Simon has nothing to worry about. "I know you want to stay, but… just in case."Between putting down roots and running away.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank [Wish_On_A_Wing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wish_On_A_Wing/pseuds/Wish_On_A_Wing) for translating the entire thing to English! That was insane of her! She's incredible and I still can't quite figure out why she would do that. My eternal gratitude, dear.

 

_Sometimes my hands they don't feel like my own_

_I need someone to love I need someone to hold – Red Dust / James Vincent McMorrow_

 

Roarton's sky is grey and Kieren absorbs it in like the dirt stuck to his jeans. He is indifferent to the shifts in the weather, but he watches the wind; His lack of sensation makes him imagine that he's swept forward, and sometimes he trips. Once he fell asleep on the couch that Amy left Simon (Simon covered him with a blanket, and when Kieren woke up he put an empty tray in front of him and said: "breakfast in bed"), and came home to find his dad pacing hysterically across the living room, and Jem, her hair falling across her shoulders, rolling her eyes at the two of them. Dad is yelling at him, and Kieren, who wonders how the universe had cursed him with being eighteen forever, listens. His dad is still concerned about Simon, still fractured by trauma, and Kieren is always quiet until he isn’t. Kieren dreams of storms, of a wind that tears him far away without him noticing, and he takes a deep breath and explains to himself that he and his dad are scared of the same things.

Roarton's sky is grey, and every so often Kieren turns to Simon and wonders how come he's here – planted in place and uprooted. He seems like a lost boy who forgot how to get back to Peter Pan: a grave look in his eyes and sharp words shoved down his throat. He swallows down his propaganda speeches, but not the anger.

Once, hey stood across from each other in Amy's kitchen and Simon told Kieren that he was _glad_ when the fight at the pub started. His mouth is curved upwards in a way the resembled a smile, and his voice is slow, appeasing, as though he knows Kieren is about to lash out. He says quietly: "I… wanted to see what you would do." He deserves Kieren lashing out at him. He deserves it, for not knowing Kieren and trying to push his buttons and see how far Kieren would go. Garry is a piece of scum, prone to think Kieren was a spineless wuss until he decided to think he's in fact a monster, and Kieren was neither one of the two. This isn’t high school. Kieren doesn’t like jumping through hoops to prove that he qualifies the standards of a perfectly normal human being. So Simon deserves it if Kieren yells at him. But then he smiles and says, "Obviously, I didn’t expect you to push him to the floor and damage the furniture. That was something special." And he sounds – fond, filled by some twisted kind of nostalgia. Kieren thinks of Simon, looks at him, his hand wrapped around Garry's neck and Amy by his side like a guardian angel. He rolls his eyes. He lets it slide.

*

He's not sure what Simon saw in him – to begin with. Rick had loved Kieren since the dawn of days, was raised and nurtured to it. He spoke Kieren's language before he got to understand that it was a bad idea and agreed to pose for his paintings before people could tell Titanic jokes ("paint me like one of your French girls," Rick had asked him once, after Kieren had told him he was dreaming of Paris. But neither of them ever followed through). He didn’t remember how to be without Kieren. He had no choice. Simon came to a godforsaken town to do god knows what and decided that Kieren deserves his attention more than others. He could ask – Simon would probably be happy to tell him, actually. But the truth is that he's afraid of the answer. One day they might find out that Simon likes the struggling, fighting side of Kieren, and that Kieren is only fighting for the right to live in peace.

In the meantime, Simon haunts Amy's bungalow like a ghost and circles Kieren like a planet. They spend the majority of their time in the walkways, strolling at the edges of the forest or around the cemetery. Roarton appears quite large when Kieren maps it in his mind, when Kieren wakes up in the middle of the night wondering where Simon is, but he knows it by heart, he can find his way around it in his sleep. The truth is that, excluding that place that might have been a prison and might have been a psychiatric ward and might have been something else entirely, it's all he knows. He hated the town all the more for it, in the past.

He listened to Simon, who had walked across continents and dismissed them with a shrug, and wanted to say that running isn’t a bad thing, if you're trapped. When you look for a shelter, you're not picky (meanwhile, the president of France had decided to embrace Britain's Give Back Scheme. The outraged crowds flood the streets of Paris with protest signs at best and Blue Oblivion at worst, and the press is furious that the government does not allow partially deceased to run for parliament, which is absurd, because you have to be a citizen to take part in politics). There's nowhere to run. And Kieren doesn’t have a passport, so there's no way to, either. So Kieren chooses the people he loves. He chooses the Roarton cemetery. He chooses his family.

*

Amy left Jem her hair accessories ("I know I have a lot of friends who would love to have them, for I have great taste in everything, but the way she dresses is so depressing to me, you know? All that blandness. I've got to do something. Kieren, this is for you."), and Jem isn’t really into it, but she keeps them in her room in a box like a sort of monument, and she puts that flower in her hair when Kieren had a bad day. Simon took a long look at her and said, "Isn't it strange she left Jem her stuff?" Jem recoils, takes a step back and looks at Simon like she's not sure whether to run away or shout. Kieren, on his side, opens his mouth to politely ask Simon why he's such an idiot.

"I just mean – why is her will so up to date," He explains. He stares at Kieren with two tired eyes, and Kieren considers nagging him about his insomnia again. He sighs and puts his fingers on Simon's palm, caressing the knuckles with his thumb. Jem's eyes dart to them, then back to Simon's face. "She crushed her watch, and all that."

Kieren understands, suddenly. And something in his chest tightens. But nothing was clear about Amy's death, except the fact that it was pointless, and this is just – just one more variable. And if Kieren thinks about it too much he would lose his mind. For real.

"What the fuck are you talking about," Jem sighs. She addresses Kieren, "teach him to communicate with mankind." She passes a hand through her hair, pulls the flower out, then walks over and arranges it in Kieren's hair, while Kieren is trying unsuccessfully to drive her away. Simon raises his eyebrows at her. (He doesn’t know what she did. Kieren never told him. Not his secret to tell, he doesn’t know how Simon would react, it's none of Simon's business, ect. He lives in a country with a legal precedent which states that a partially deceased is also only partially alive, and he sees the look on Simon's face, sometimes. He doesn’t act like the Prophet's apostle anymore, but he thinks like one. He wouldn’t understand Jem. He won't forgive her.)

Jem rolls her eyes at him, messes up Kieren's hair, and walks away. Kieren is well aware that neither of them did a fantastic job at leaving a good first impression, but he had decided that they need to get along, nonetheless. Amy had left him and Simon crippled – drifting around independently but aimless, stalling over every detail of the event as if meaninglessness was the reason for their pain. Jem – she's folded into herself as though she's forgotten how her muscles work, listening to her music in too high a volume, srounded by her blankets and her hair and her night terrors. Simon stares at Kieren and Kieren says, "I made her that CD." He thinks people like them should stick together.

 

Simon leads them to Kieren's grave, sometimes. Kieren is not sure what that means, if he should take offence or compliment. Most of the time, it's funny in a kind of morbid way. Simon would put his hand on the back of Kieren's neck, look at the tombstone and say, "This should be embroidered on a pillow." And it would be a little cruel, and a little out of term, but funny, because he's right, and Kieren is more prone to laughing with him than he is to defending the decisions his parents made in hard times.

"Not all of us can recite poems from World War I, Simon."

A smile tugs at the edges of Simon's lips. "I'm sure everyone can. They just don’t want to." He really cannot stand the caption on Kieren's gravestone.

The thing is, Simon doesn’t have a home, and doesn't have any money. The good news is that the partially deceased need very little to survive. The bad news is his clothes are falling apart; that he doesn’t sleep at night. He obediently goes to The Give Back Scheme then stubbornly goes wherever Kieren goes (no one bothers to argue with him about that anymore. Kieren knows that once someone wants to pester them again, the subject will resurface. But Simon – well, he's not as nice when he's alone. It's better off when he's with Kieren, really). The thing is that Simon doesn’t need food or water or heating but he needs – something. That he had and is now gone. He needs – he thinks of Amy at the train station, gracing Kieren with a sad smile and telling him she needs a family. He thinks of Simon, who had learned to love the soldiers he has guarded. He's not sure what happened between Simon and the Prophet, exactly, but he knows something had. He thinks – about the postcard from Rick and hearing what happened from Dean (the stupid jerk don’t even talk about him) and how the walls of the cave closed in on him along with the walls of his room and the skies above. The notion of Simon being alone scares him. (He doesn’t ask about Simon's family. It's just – it's not something you ask).

Simon looks at Kieren's tombstone with serious eyes and Kieren thinks about how he should get along with Jem, how it could work. How he needs Kieren not to be the only thing – but maybe that's pretentious. Simon came here from a long way away, and what does Kieren really know. (And he liked it. He liked being the one that Simon looks for when he walks into a room and the one Simon turns to talk to and the sole person Simon doesn’t consider an idiot. He hadn’t – _belonged_ to someone like that since Rick left. It's grounding. He feels better about the universe when Simon looks at him).

"So what, in fact, do you do?" Kieren asks, and he wasn’t really planning to ask, but – well, this kind of things happens to him.

"What, in fact, do I do?" The thing with Simon is, he recites poems and throws enigmatic sentences in the air and tells anecdotes from his life and is entirely convinced he's an open book, but most of the time Kieren can't read him at all.

Kieren smiles against his will. "With your free time," he clarifies. "You know, now that you don’t direct confession hour in zombies anonymous." He really couldn’t stand Simon's confession hour.

Simon blinks at him.

Kieren looks to the sky. The sun can't blind him, but he's not allowed to look directly at it. Their eyes are infuriatingly sensitive, and when he isn’t careful they beat with pain afterwards (he feels physical pain in a sort of hazy way. Sharp enough to bother and vague enough to not be human, sometimes Kieren puts two fingers to his eyes and waits for the dam to be breached. His nervous system would reactivate and his function and the shadows in his brain will deploy their patronage over him. But – it doesn’t work like that. That won't happen. It's silly). "Do you stare at the ceiling and think about the meaning of life?"

"I do that when I'm with you," Simon comments.

"James Bond movies marathon?"

"Waiting for you with that," He says.

"Oh – you'll be waiting a long time." And then, "Do you read _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_? Play Irish folk songs on the guitar? Build miniature houses with toothpicks?"

Simon chuckles, and Kieren feels faint sense of triumph at that. "Well, sometimes."

"What?" He stops, thinks of what he said, and then decides to choose sanity. "You play guitar?"

"Sometimes," Simon repeats. He looks distant, some old fire flickering in his eyes, and Kieren wonders if he's stepped on a wound. He wants to say that if Simon told him more this would happen less. But the truth is Simon will talk if Kieren would ask him to. Kieren is afraid to ask.

"Well, you'll have to play for me sometime."

Simon raises his eyebrows. "Why?"

"Because you haven’t until now and that's totally absurd?" He says. "Plus you've seen all my paintings."

"That's because they're enormous and hanging on all the walls of your room." But he's smiling, and Kieren decides to smile back and silently acknowledge the fact that he won. (Later he'll tell Jem, and she'll burst out laughing and say, "Of course he plays guitar, Kieren. have you even met him?")

He lifts his hand and passes his fingers along Simon's shoulder; closes his eyes for a few moments. Enjoying the silence. "You coming to dinner tonight?"

Simon shuts his eyes, opens them. He sighs. "We don’t eat dinner, Kieren." It's not that Simon can't stand Kieren's parents, but he's not comfortable around them. They're torn between their gratitude and the fact that they can't understand how the hell did someone like Simon drop into their lives. Simon's attempts to take part in the conversation usually ended in awkward silence (to be fair, one must point out that so did most of Jem's attempts). Kieren knows this. He drags Simon when he can, anyway. When Simon's in the right mood. Simon looks at him a certain way, at the moment. Kieren knows he'd just do what would make him happy. (He's not sure this is what would. In the sense that happiness seems a very strong word, and Kieren is afraid to put a seal on it. He knows that the chance of drowning in his own thoughts is smaller when Simon is there. That Simon can cause the anxiety floating through his chest to subside. That he just can't think of Simon, in Amy's bungalow, alone. In his dreams Simon sits in a dark room, getting swallowed away into the shadows.)

"You said that last time," the 'and I won last time, too' was left unsaid.

"And it was true then, as well," He says. Then, fast: "Your parents don’t like me, I don’t want to intrude on your family time, your sister thinks I'm a psycho, no one will talk about PDS sufferers out of fear that I'd voice my opinions and if I had one more small talk about the raccoon that snuck into your barn I would stick a fork through my palm just to see what would happen."

Kieren's smile widens. "You said that last time."

Simon passes his fingers through his hair. He has this look on his face when he lets something Kieren does slide, something that says: _How the hell did I end up here?_ And Kieren thinks he should maybe be offended, but he likes it.

"I'm not putting the cover-up on," He finally says.

Kieren shrugs. "No one else will, so you'd have looked kind of funny if you did."

He gets another smile out of Simon, and he part sighs part says, "fine. Fine."                                                                                   

*

Simon likes Kieren's dad. He won't admit it, but it's true. Kieren knows because his dad had attempted to talk to Simon about the Matrix Extended Edition for Blu-Ray, and Simon genuinely tried to express his opinion (which summed up to "um, no. I don't own a DVD player" and progressed to "I'm not sure Amy's telly even works", at which point he turned to Kieren with a part annoyed part questioning look, as if Kieren knows the answer. The whole saga amounted to the line: "No, I haven’t had the chance to keep track of Keanu Reeves' career."). Simon is convinced that Kieren's father doesn’t like him. It's – partially true. Steve Walker has nothing against Simon Monroe as a person, he has something against Simon Monroe as a person that reminds Kieren that he's angry about so many things.

"It's just that you're always so… tempestuous when he's around, you know?" He said to Kieren once, cautious, but not cautious enough. "And I'm grateful for what he did, don’t you think I'm not. Simon's always welcome here. But it's like it brings it out of you – this fury." Kieren swallowed, though about seventeen different comments taken directly from the teen dictionary ("Bullshit" and "you don’t even know me"). "What your father's trying to say," his mum started gently, but Jem cut her off with: "Is that your desire to impress Simon is interrupting their precious peace and quiet. Can we change the subject before Kieren starts yelling even though Simon isn’t here?"

They're probably right. It's just that Simon is the kind of person who makes you doubt. Whose presence reminds Kieren to ask and to react and that the stockpile of anger in his chest – it's okay. It isn’t ideal, but sometimes it's necessary. And Kieren's parents should hear what Kieren has to say, because if Kieren is going to live his new life here, it means they should listen to him. It's just that Simon swallows down most his own anger, these days. He doesn’t want trouble with Kieren's parents and he doesn’t want to get into an argument that would make him bare his teeth ("I'm scared that if I start talking I wouldn’t stop," he explained, and Kieren rolled his eyes and said, "I got Gary to shut up, I can handle you"). Kieren was the one who got him to put on the mouse, at the time. He's the reason Simon is sitting to a set table facing food he has no way of digesting, digging his fingernails into his palm, playing uncomfortably with the edges of the tablecloth. Kieren knows what Simon would’ve said. He feels a need to fill the void. It's not like he's trying to impress Simon – only he probably is. It's a little embarrassing. He likes the look Simon affixes him with when Kieren says something especially good. He likes representing Simon. He likes getting his attention. He –

Like he said, it's kind of embarrassing.

So Kieren's dad is worried over Simon. Not like Bill Macy was worried over Kieren – a gaunt, feminine, blonde devil who'd used his demonic powers to divert Rick from the straight path, who had created every inappropriate aspect of Rick's character from scratch – more like you worry over broken mirrors and black cats. Over the slightly older boy convincing your kid to grab a  smoke.

Now, Simon is sitting at the table wrapped in a sweater (Kieren wonders what he wears during summer and how would that even look) and tells Kieren's mum that her food looks terrific.

"It is terrific," Kieren says, "it was my favorite food when I was able to eat." He can smell, and for a moment or two he thinks he'd like to eat, were it possible.

(He only tried to eat once, and it was at the treatment center. A doctor whose name Kieren can't remember offered him to try some sort of food that the medics thought they might able to digest, and Kieren knew he was going to regret it. The first thing Other Dead tell you is don’t take from anything from the doctors you're not obligated to, but Kieren had to try, because he hadn’t eaten in several months, and – you can't just stop. When you rise from the dead you aspire for normalcy. You seek your humanity high and low. And the thing is, no one told them anything. No one bothered to share the information of how their body works with them. Kieren would look at his white, blood-free hands and wonder when would his mind realize that his body is shut down. So he tried, and it was bad – he was at the beginning of the treatment, and his body didn’t respond well, and he threw up for two days straight. He hadn’t even thought to try since then.)

Simon puts a hand on Kieren's knee, as if signaling him to come back to the world of the living, and Kieren pulls it together. "Anyway, uh –" He say. "You should've been there."

Simon purses his lips into something that resembles a smile. "I don’t think we would’ve gotten along, necessarily," he says slowly, "at least not in a way that would earn me an invitation to family dinners."

Kieren chews on his lower lip. The truth is, they wouldn’t get along simply because Kieren wouldn’t have seen Simon. Simply because at that time he didn’t really see anything. But there's something horridly depressing in thinking about Simon, doped out of his mind, and about Kieren, head towards the ground and hands in his pockets, not even noticing. He shakes that, too, and smiles at Simon. "Your loss."

That's when Kieren's mum decides to participate in the conversation. "I don’t think you've ever mentioned where you're from, Simon."

Kieren knows they're screwed. He sinks in his chair a bit and sends a miserable look towards Jem, who raises her eyebrows at him.

His mum, on her end, sounds extremely pleased with herself, like she's found an ingenious conversation topic and she can't figure out how come she didn’t come up with it sooner. Kieren sighs.

Simon tilts his head. "Do you mean where was I born or where did I die?"

His mum opens her mouth to answer, then closes it again.

He smiles at her. "Cork. Both."

She squeaks a surprised noise and nods her head, and for a moment Kieren's worried she'd say something stupid like, "there's no place like home", although that's more like his dad to do, but she doesn’t. Instead, she sounds determined when she asks: "And what did you do before – if I may ask?" Only, the determination turns to embarrassment mid -sentence, and she sends Kieren and apologetic glance. "I mean. You must be older than Kieren –" Another apologetic glance. "You must've had…" She doesn’t finish her sentence, and Kieren's not sure what was supposed to go there. _A job? A family? A clear, solid plan for life?_

Simon fiddles with the edges of his sweater, and Kieren remembers: _You shouldn’t be ashamed of your scars._ Something tightens in his chest, and he wants to take Simon's hand and just get out. (Although it's probably his family that needs protecting from Simon. He's not sure why he's so stressed out for him). He bites his lower lip and thinks of how he's learned his lesson about dinners. Actually, he thinks the concept is redundant and everyone should just sit in different parts of the house and eat toast. Except him. Because he doesn’t eat.

"I did a lot of traveling," Simon says slowly. "Around the world."

"How interesting," Kieren's mum says. "Where?"

Simon counts something with his fingers, then gives up. He doesn’t seem upset, exactly. Just gloomy. His story of the failed journey to the US was polished and complete with a moral. Kieren knew that Simon had told it before, that it had affected other people. It aggravated him. Now, without the audience and the preaching, Kieren could see a dark-haired boy wondering around in a big city, closing his eyes to the reality that traveled here with him. There's no message here. It's just plain sad. "United States. Then Central America." He says at last, tipping his head back as though trying to remember. "Back to Europe…"

"For how long?" Jem asks.

Simon shrugs. "As long as I had left."

Kieren's dad tries for a smile. "Trying to find yourself?"

Simon also tries for a smile. His fake smile is better. "No, I wasn’t." Kieren can imagine the next line: 'but that's okay, I found myself right here. All I had to do was die.' Simon looks away, to Kieren, sighs, and turns to Kieren's parents again. He can picture Simon reaching to hold the glass he has no reason to drink from (or Kieren's shoulder, or just thin air) and the sleeve of his sweater is pushed down enough to see the scars. He can picture himself yelling at his parents till his throat is sore. He's tired even before Simon mouths another word. "But that's okay. I ended up finding myself right here."

Kieren smiles at him. He's not sure what he's scared of – well, not scared of; of what he's trying to control. He wants everyone to get along. He wants – serenity. So he extinguishes imaginary fires in his mind. So he goes on fighting something that's not there. (Sometimes, he thinks he understands Amy's need to go out to the pub without her cover-up. He understands the – anger, the desire to act. When he wanted to leave, the fact that nobody wanted him here was horribly depressing, but it was also a motive. All he has left right now is frustration). It's not his parents' fault. It's definitely not Simon's fault. He wants to take Simon away and settle down on a desert island, and just rest. Just exist there. And the thing is you learn to be cautious. You can't decide not to give a fuck, but your reflexes are well-trained, and you have – voices in your head. And you feel weak and paranoid.

He wants to take Simon away. So he allows Simon to describe India to his parents for five more minutes, then says, "well, um – Simon and I are really full." And his dad sighs and his mum rolls her eyes and Jem already left the table to do god knows what, so he takes Simon's arm and drags him towards his room.

Simon is lying on the bed, leaned on his elbows, smiling, comfortable in Kieren's room as if it were his own and he's lived here his whole life, and for a few moments, Kieren's just busy staring at him. He looks even whiter in the low light, his hair a mess from all the times he's passed his fingers through it, and Kieren wants to kiss across his jaw, pin him to the mattress with his weight and crawl his hand under his shirt. He wants a functioning nervous system. He wants to be close to Simon all the time.

"So…" Simon starts. "That was interesting."

Kieren rolls his eyes. "Shut it."

"It's always interesting here," Simon continues, as if Kieren never spoke.

"Yeah, well," he says, his voice petulant in a way that's probably not flattering. "I try." And then, on second thought, because he knows that Simon tries, and he knows that he isn’t easy himself, that he wanted to leave and then he wanted to stay, that his self-confidence shines between panic attacks, that Simon doesn’t feel safe here nor in Amy's house nor anywhere: "Sorry." What he wanted to say was thank you. It didn’t translate right. His throat isn’t really listening to him.

Simon pulls his hands so the rest on his stomach. He tries to lean against the wall behind the bed, understands that Kieren had hung a painting there (mum and Jem, sitting on the couch in the living room. Jem's hair covers her face and mum's smiling), and settles for Kieren's pillow. ("Your room is filled with mines," he once told Kieren, after he accidently put his coat on a half dry oil painting and Kieren nearly had a heart attack. Then he said, "at least I ruined my own stupid face, huh?" and when Kieren kept giving him a death stare, he kissed him and said, "I'm sorry." Kieren ended up giving him the painting. Simon says it amplifies the narcissistic impression he tries to give off to the world). Simon stares at him meaningfully. "Are you just going to stand there all evening?"

Kieren rolls his eyes once more, just to make a point, then takes the necessary steps to close the distance between him and the bed. "Move over," he orders. Simon obeys, and Kieren lies down next to him and – relaxes, a bit. Not all the way. He hasn’t been completely relaxed since he was completely dead. Simon has this kind of aftershave that Rick wouldn’t have used even if you'd put a gun to his temple, and his clothes smell like Amy's detergent, and Kieren closes his eyes and considers disappearing. But he's lost that ability as well. He leans his head against Simon's arm instead, not wanting to move ever again.

"Take me away," he mumbles, and his lips move against the fabric of Simon's shirt, and it probably would’ve bugged him had he been able to really feel.

Beside him, Simon tenses. It happens all at once and that scares Kieren. He sits up, and Kieren wants to protest, but he lifts his eyes to look at Simon, and the look on his face stops him.

"Do you want to leave?" He says, and there's something in his eyes – urgent and intense and almost desperate. And Kieren has no idea what's the right thing to say, only that he's probably about to disappoint.

"Uh –" He says, "Not forever. Just… to take a break. Go to the city, maybe?" He says. (Simon still disappears from time to time. Not often, and not for long. But Kieren's learned to guess where to, and the thought bothers him). "I need to not be here," he says quietly. "Not to not be in general – just here." He takes a deep breath. He reminds himself that he's Kieren Walker, partially deceased, and that his identity does not depend on where he is. He reminds himself that he's strong and immortal and steady on both his feet. He reminds himself that those who died in Roarton will still be dead in Paris and in Leeds and in outer space. "Just for a couple of hours." He reminds himself that it's okay to breath. That it doesn’t mean he's giving up. It's okay.

Simon bends over him, Kieren can't read his expression, until he relaxes. His muscles loosen up and the look in his eyes softens, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. "I'll take you wherever you want, Kieren." He says quietly.

Kieren raises an eyebrow. "You'll take me?"

Simon's smile broadens. "Forgive me, I meant to say that I will toe behind you wherever you go, should you let me."

Kieren tries to swallow down his own idiotic smile. "Well, maybe via Google Maps." He teases. "We don’t have passports, remember?"

Simon's lips grow thin, and he looks at Kieren cautiously, like a man considering his next move. He has that look on his face, when he knows he's going to say something that would make Kieren angry. Part ready for an argument part – he really doesn’t have a word for it. Simon can throw everything to shit, but he hates letting people down. He's scared of the consequences. Kieren tries to except it with humility. He remembers how Simon's anger looks. He remembers how he felt when Simon had just given up on him. He understands. Then the look is gone, and Simon returns to his old self again. He lies down on the bed next to Kieren once more, kisses his shoulder and then elbows him. "What happened to the absolute confidence that I could smuggle you out of the country, huh?"

So Kieren wants to roll his eyes hard, and he wants to ask Simon what's he done, because sometimes – sometimes Simon's eyes shine and the muscles in his jaw grow tense, and his fingernails dig into Kieren's skin in a way that has to be too strong. He buries his face in the curve of Kieren's neck, and what's eating at him is eating at them both. But he sighs, and puts his arm on Simon's chest, just because he can. "I didn’t know you that well back then, you know."

Simon snorts. "Asshole."

*

After Simon leaves, Kieren is left with a darkened living room and his own thoughts. He considers painting, but that would lead to a sleepless night, and he's working for the give back scheme tomorrow. It's bad enough without the haze of tiredness and annoyance. He sits at the computer instead, and in a moment's decision he opens the browser and enters the Prophet's website. The same opening video as always, the same propaganda. Nothing's change there, so he's not sure what's changed for Simon. The Prophet starts talking out of an automatically-activated video, and Kieren sighs and silences it demonstratively. On Tuesday, Jeffry tried to make Simon trip over a construction hole. Simon stepped over his foot nonchalantly then made a hole in the bag of gravel he was supposed to carry. And it's not like they could die from a fall like that. But the Prophet's followers feed off their lust for vengeance and their minds are filled with air, and Kieren just doesn’t have any more patience for thi. If they think they can mess with Simon, it's their problem. (Simon remembers. And Simon doesn’t let the expression 'water under the bridge' stop him from closing tabs with any rebellious ex-followers when the opportunity presents itself. Kieren is tired of bullies. He's tires of looking over his shoulder all the time. He doesn’t care anymore.)

It's all nice and well, making a decision to stay. But he doesn’t know what to do. But t's hard for him to walk through the path he and Rick used to take to the school, it's hard for him to hear a certain kind of music, he can still see Rick leaning against his garage door. He still hates himself for making the mistake of thinking they have time again, sometimes.

But he's afraid that he's dragging Simon down along with him.


	2. Chapter 2

He visits Rick's grave every couple of days, and the truth is there's no one else that will. Mrs. Macy left Roarton to live with her sister, and Kieren remembers her from the funeral. She was shaking endlessly, her arms wrapped around her body and her face distorted in yet-to-be-released pain, endless as well. And it's horrible of him, for sure, but he's glad she left. He's not sure how he'd look at her. He's not sure how could he have taken care of her. And the rest of Rick's friends – well, he died because he was a zombie and a queer. They weren’t happy with his murder, but that didn’t change a thing about him, about how to them, the waste of his life was due to his otherness, not his death. He belonged to Kieren now.

He goes, but the need to talk has lessened. He isn’t really – lost, anymore. In this town he knows by heart. Jem walks into his room in determined strides and tries to spill her head out, and Kieren isn't sure how to comfort her as the starting point of her problem, isn't sure how to console her as the guy who only has his failures to learn from. But he thinks – this is good. The fact that they're working to right their wrongs together. The fact that eventually, they'll be able to learn from each other. So he talks as well. He won't stop talking until she elbows him and tells him to shut it for two minutes. Sometimes they just listen to music.

It's some sort of urge – to spew all his demons out. To cleanse himself. He thinks about his dad, saying things he should have kept to himself forever, and then, defensive: _I'm just saying what I feel._ He doesn’t do that. He swallows down a lot. Sometimes he chooses to keep quiet. Sometimes Simon gently puts a hand on the back of his neck and says: "Well, this day was a disaster," and Kieren doesn’t even need to talk about it. He allows Simon to steer him around until he feels a little bit better.

Sometimes he just paints. There really isn’t any more space in his room, and his fingers stain Simon's skin, his knuckles and his jaw line and his neck. Amy's place is filled with paintings and sometimes Kieren feels deranged, painting out of sheer obsession. He lets the content of his thoughts scatter on the floor until the hole in his chest fills up and he doesn’t have to think. (Simon says they're great. Simon says you can't hate something created out of emotion. Simon pulls Kieren close and buries his fingers in his hair and keeps silent).

He doesn’t take Simon to Rick's grave. It seems – well, it would just be plain out rude, and Kieren still believes in tact, deep down. They're two different parts of his life, anyway. Rick is the foundation whereas Simon came into the 'after', and even though they both speak Kieren's language they wouldn’t have spoken each other's. Rick would have started a fight. Simon doesn’t fight fair, so he probably would’ve won. There's a numb pain in Kieren's chest.

The thing is – his eyes still sting, sometimes. His skin is hot then cold, and he's not sure he isn’t imagining it all. His palm shakes above Rick's grave as an ill-bearing sign, and Kieren balances it parallel to the ground as though he could awaken an earthquake, make the whole world move. The thing is there's something that's twisting around in his chest, like a snowball of anxiety that you can ignore until you can't. So he sits down on the grass and chews on his lower lip and wraps his fingers around his wrist.

He's the only one who comes to visit, so he's all alone.

*

They continue building the fence, and Kieren feels a certain discomfort at the sight of the tangled wires. Simon said, at the time, "we should leave some breaches," and then when Kieren gave him a horrified look: "If they won't let us leave by train, and if there's a fence, and if for some reason the roads get blocked – we won't be able to get out of here." Kieren wouldn’t dare – he couldn’t even imagine how he'd feel if someone got hurt because Kieren's boyfriend has turned him in to a paranoid conspirator. But Simon's words echo through his head. He plans escape routes. He wonders around the edges of the town. He memorizes roads in the forest. Every so often, Simon pins him to a tree bark and kisses him till he has no more air in his lungs, and then he calls it a date.

Jem said that, "if you're going to stay, you can't be daft about it." And she's right. Kieren shakes off a coma only when people step on him, when it's too late to repair the damage already done. He's not going to let anyone step all over him now. And Simon's learned a lot from the Prophet. Simon is tense like only a man scared for his life would be. If Kieren can't do something, he can be certain that Simon would know how to handle it, or at least how to figure it out. It's a good feeling – something resembling control (he wonders what would have happened had they been able to take him to the treatment center. If Simon would’ve allowed it to happen. If there would’ve been something he could have done. He wonders if Gary knows that in fact, he saved him. Probably, thought presumably he doesn’t appreciate the irony the way Kieren's learned to).

They continue building the fence, but right now they're on their break, sitting on the lawn as they did back then. The Prophet's gang sits far away from them, as if Simon is contagious, and Kieren wants to tell them that they're just plain stupid, like, truly – it's a marvel that they even manage to tie their own shoe laces, but he's enjoying the fact that they're being left alone.

"Do you really think they could confine us to this place?" He asks, voice hushed, as he shoots a nervous glance towards the zombies anonymous gang.

Simon raises an eyebrow. "I thought you told me not to do anything."

Kieren rolls his eyes. "And did you listen to me?"

" _Yes._ " He sounds annoyed, like a kid who's done a hard task and didn’t get any recognition. He nods towards them. "I can't promise they haven’t done anything, but that's beyond my powers."

Kieren bites his lower lip. "We've been accused for something they've done once before, Simon. I'm not going through that again."

Simon's smile is thin and bitter. "Don't worry." He says, his voice stiff.

Kieren considers a sigh. He considers saying that Simon's vague promises of protection don’t impress him. That if Simon wants Kieren to be able to defend himself when Simon's not there, he should work harder at it – but Simon does so much. And the truth is Kieren is impressed – slightly. Well, he believes him. God knows how they got this far.

"At least we're not stationed in the clinic again."

Simon's laughter is also bitter. "After we set two rabids free? Come on, Kieren."

But he thinks this is good, as well. Bill Macy and Gary were looking for trouble. Bill came after them like they were the embodiment of the devil himself (literally. He truly thought that), and Gary was just a bully. They wanted war and were looking for an excuse to kill and Gary drugged Kieren so that Jem could seal the deal. The council – no one allows Simon to go near the clinic anymore. No one allows him to work with any of the clerks, or work with the gang, or work by himself. They're still a bunch of scumbags, but they'd like to avoid trouble, not create them. In Kieren's dreams Simon gets taken away, and he has to go look for him, but he discovers he hasn’t left Roarton, he's going in circles. And he's not going to treat Simon like a ticking bomb, but –

"And you wonder why my dad thinks you're bad influence."

"I don’t wonder. I think it's an unfair interpretation of the turn of events."

"Uh-huh."

Dean barks at them to keep working, and Simon mumbles something unrecognizable that is probably neither nice nor child-appropriate. Kieren smiles.

*

On their way home, Rachel and Derek corner Kieren and ask as politely as possible about his rising. Kieren assumes the reason behind that incredibly stupid action was that Simon wasn’t with him at that particular moment. Simon came two minutes later, while Kieren struggles to find more ways to say: _It's so much none of your business that I feel the need to go across the street and bang my head against that brick wall._ Simon does not look amused. Rachel tells Simon she's not afraid of him, but he says: "Go," and she takes a step back. And he says, "now," and takes a step towards them, and they start walking away (Kieren wants his powers. When he yells at people to go away they stand ground and argue).

After they leave, Simon is planted in place for a few seconds, not hearing as Kieren calls his name.

"Simon. Simon – hey." He puts his hand on Simon's arm, and the latter jumps and turns to look at him. "It's no big deal, they weren’t trying to hurt me." Then, when Simon doesn’t respond, "what's going on?"

Simon gestures towards the trail. "Come on," he says, and starts walking. Kieren wants to stand ground and argue, maybe grab Simon's shoulders and shake him, a bit. He turns to follow Simon instead.

*

Kieren's house is deserted, but they sit in Kieren's room with the door closed, Kieren on the bed, leaning against the wall. Simon looks speechless, and eventually he gets up and starts pacing around Kieren's room. Kieren's not sure what to do with him.

"Simon," he emphasizes. Simon stops, and Kieren sighs in relief. "What is going on?" He doesn’t want any more trouble. It seemed as though he was ready for it, but he isn’t. He just wants peace.

Kieren gets up too, strides until he stands in front of him. Simon fixes him with an inquiring gaze. Then he sighs, a thing that's deep and tired, and lifts his hand to rest on Kieren's neck. "You need a new rising story," he says quietly. "Okay?"

Kieren's eyebrows climb up. "Uh – _why?_ " He finds himself emitting. "Why would I even tell anyone my rising story?"

Simon is silent.

"Yeah – okay. But that was different, Gary was being a son of a bitch, and –" He stops, uncertain as to why this is important.

Simon remains silent.

"I don’t understand, Simon."

Simon sighs, passes his fingers through his hair. "Kieren," he says slowly, intently, as though he could use the name to gain control over something. "Promise me, okay?"

Kieren shakes his head, getting angrier by the moment. His palm shakes. His eyes sting. He doesn’t have the strength for this. "I'm not promising anything, Simon, because I don’t understand."

"You shouldn’t be giving them stuff they can use against you." Simon says. His eyes are wide and his voice is pleading. Kieren can't understand why he won't just explain it. If there's a good reason, Kieren would listen to him. Simon knows that. So why is he acting like an idiot.

"Simon."

"Kieren, they don’t mean well." The thing is, when Kieren looked at Simon he thought the Prophet had power. Simon gives off a sense of stability and security. He makes you believe that he knows what he's doing (Kieren told him that once, and Simon stared at him for seven long seconds then said: "Then why the hell do you always argue with me?"). And most importantly – he makes you believe that he's sane. At least on some level. A little. Now, Kieren looks at what's remains of the Apostles and sees a bunch of little kids left without adult supervision. On one hand, they don’t deserve the look in Simon's eyes, the way he tries to create a barricade between them and Kieren. On the other hand, Gary was made the exact same way.

"I'm not gonna tell them anything, Simon, you're acting like an idio –"

"No, that's not good enough, don’t you understand?"

"I will if you explain it to me –"

"The best thing you can be in this system is invisible," Simon says, and his voice is sharp, and his eyes spit fire. "If you refuse to talk, they'll keep asking. If you get them off your back –"

Kieren rolls his eyes. "Gary knows the true story. Do you suggest we get rid of him?"

Simon's lips stretch into something that resembles a smile, but not an amused one. "Always." He lifts his hand until it rests on Kieren's shoulder. "I'm asking you to listen to me."

Kieren shakes his head once more.

Simon closes his eyes, opens them. "You can leave the part about pushing out the grave. It'll make the story more believable." He swallows.

"Yeah," Kieren says. "Okay. So I make my way through the soil –"

"Until you stood up by the grave. The wind was strong in a way that made it hard for you to move, and there was a storm around, like you said –"

"Yeah, the rain really messed up my hair –"

 

"You started walking, but it wasn’t easy. A lot of the graves in your plot were cracked. Others were roaming around aimlessly, blocking the way, looking for _something,_ you knew they were feeling the same awful hunger you were –"

"And then someone offered we go for fish and chips?"

"You saw Amy. You remember her because of the flowery dress. You saw Charlie. You remember him because he was buried in a Manchester United shirt. You remember its red. Later he told you it was signed."

"But we didn’t have any money –"

"You remember the moon, and the way the storm hit the trees and you had to make your way in the mud. The noise of others, trying to escape their coffins. Steps, all around you." And he goes quiet.

Kieren sighs. "It must've been quite a party, huh?"

Simon says Kieren's name, again, as if it was a claim, as if he was sharing information. His grip on Kieren's arm grows tighter. "Sometimes I just wanna take you and get away from here." He says quietly – it's not the first time he says it. It won't be the last. Whatever it is that makes Simon look at Kieren like that – it's not going away. Kieren is trying to get used to his life once more, minus one extra person. Simon… he's waiting for the next disaster, apparently. He's standing guard. And Kieren should be grateful, because it means he doesn’t have to. But Kieren passes his time watching Simon, and –

Whatever it is that's making Simon look like that is not going away. Whatever it is that's making Simon's voice crack is not going away. Sometimes Kieren rolls up his sleeves to check for bruises where Simon sank his fingers – his arm, his waist even though he knows they won't be there. Whatever it is that's making Simon grab hold of him like that is not going away.

Kieren's hand is shaking. He decides it's psychosomatic. When he realizes, it doesn’t come all at once. It's not a moment of enlightenment. He knows and doesn’t know for weeks. He can't muster the mental powers to complete the process of thought for weeks. He's grieving, and he's recovering, and the world is static, and he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want trouble. "They're looking for the first riser," he says quietly, slowly. "Like Maxine Martin did." Nothing but frustration can be read from Simon's expression, and Kieren feels that he's burning one of the bridges that connect them – he's not sure why. He wants peace. "And you think that – that what?"

The look in Simon's eyes is sealed.

"That it's me?" His voice grows louder, and Simon's eyes widen.

"Be quiet," he hushes, and the urgency is eminent in every move he makes, like Kieren is a bomb that's to be neutralized.

"It can't be me," he says after some thought, decisively. Then, before Simon has a chance to react, he continues: "It isn't! I'm not even sure – I –" His hand _won't stop shaking_. "It doesn’t mean anything. You can't know such a thing –"

"Hey. Hey, Kieren." Simon approaches him in an instant, wrapping Kieren's hand with his fingers, securing it in place. "Calm down. No one is saying that it's you."

Kieren tries to pull his hand back; Simon won't let him. "But that's what you think."

Simon hesitates. "That's what's implied by your story." He speaks cautiously. Kieren has exploded. Nothing left to do but damage control.

"But you can't know." He repeats.

Simon's smile is neither amused nor happy. "Well, without security cameras or a sign from God there really is no way of telling."

"A sign from God, what the fuck are you – _this isn’t funny._ You think I'm the guy she was looking for. You think Amy died because that psycho thought she was _me_ –"

"Kieren. Enough."

"It's not funny, Simon, you need to explain to me what is going on –"

"Kieren!" Simon's hands rest on Kieren's shoulders, and his face is very close all of a sudden. "Kieren, I'm not saying anything," his voice is soft, soothing, and Kieren remembers it from – he remembers Simon talking to Amy in that voice, and he wishes he'd remember less. "You need to calm down. You need to breath –"

"To breath –"

"Look at me." He slightly kneads Kieren's shoulders with his fingers, and the smile playing at the edges of his lips functions as a tranquilizer.

"Explain to me what is going on," he finally says, and there's no air in his lungs, and a part of him wants to rewind the conversation, never even start it, but he can't simply _drop_ it. He thinks about how the calm after a storm is a rumor. How it's actually white noise. How it's actually nothing. "I can guess, but I'd like you to explain it to me." He's breathing heavily. "You should have told me. A long time ago," he adds. Then, "you're a real – jerk." Simon's smile broadens. "No, okay, no! This isn’t right."

Simon shakes his head. His hand goes up to Kieren's neck, his hair, and he stays there a few moments before saying: "Yeah. Yeah, okay." And he backs away. Kieren misses his presence, when he's absent. It seems to him as though he's cold. It seems as though his skin is moist, like he was able to sweat. Amongst himself he calls it phantom pains. Then, "what do you want to know?"

Kieren bites his lower lip. "You think it's me?" A deep breath. Then, "is that why you wanted us to get out of here?"

Simon shrugs, his back slightly hunched, and he looks at Kieren from below. "I think it's a possibility," he says at last. "I think they'll think that as well."

Kieren's shaking all over, he wraps his arms around his chest and is unsure how to make it stop, and he wants to turn to Simon and say: 'Do something', but the words get stuck in his throat, and instead he says: "You don't actually believe that, do you? There's no way you believe that killing – that murdering someone is going to resurrect people." He waits one second, two. "Right?"

"I don’t –"

"You can't think that this is _okay_." It's a little like a compromise, and Kieren is angry at both of them. Kieren knows that Simon didn’t abandon the Prophet because of a lack of faith. Simon abandoned them because of professional differences. Simon is outcast from the community. He – Kieren doesn’t have the energy to think about that. He stops there.

"I don't," Simon says. He sounds certain this time. Kieren's teeth clatter, and he looks concerned, but he dares not approach Kieren yet. It's probably a positive thing.

"He's the reason Amy's dead!" He bursts out all of a sudden. "She supported him and he ordered her dead because he thought –" he swallows. "He's a monster. You realize he's a monster, right?" His head is spinning. Simon doesn’t look Kieren in the eye, doesn’t look stable, either.

"Did you know?" He asks, and his voice doesn’t come out right, the words are torn apart as they leave his mouth. "Is that why you were collecting stories?" It's funny, because Simon's bullshit helped. Forcing Gary to listen to his story helped him to – to cleanse off the shame that life had forced upon him. However Simon phrased it. But it really was bullshit, and Kieren is even more pissed off in retrospect.

He wants to know everything and nothing at the same time. He wants to shout as much as he wants to collapse, and to sleep, and to forgive. He supposes that's why it took so long. That he should have realized sooner. "That was your mission?" He swallows. He closes his eyes. A compromise. "Is that why you left him?"

"Go to Roarton. Find the first riser. That's all he said." He looks straight to Kieren this time, but his eyes wonder around, and he looks like he'd been hit by lightning, he looks like a man who's repenting.

"And then?"

"And then there were differences of opinion. Between us."

Kieren considers letting the matter go, but he doesn’t consider for long. "About this?" He asks.

Simon shakes his head.

Kieren wants to strangle him. Kieren wants to go over to him and bury his head in the curve of his neck and take deep breaths and believe that everything's alright. "So what – so. So you left him because he wants to kill me?"

Simon keeps staring at him, keeps quiet, and Kieren decides to take it as a 'yes'. (Rick's silences always said yes. Nobody has a problem saying 'no').

"Even though he doesn’t know he wants to kill me?"

Simon buries his hands in the pockets of his coat, then pulls them back out. For a moment Kieren thinks he's going to reach for him again, but he fists them instead, before letting go, and combines his fingers with one another. His sleeve is rolled up so that Kieren can see his injection marks, and there's a screwed up part of him that wants to pass his fingers on them. If he asks, Simon would probably let him.

He swallows. He wants to hold onto something, but Simon doesn’t look stable. Simon looks like he'd take Kieren down with him, as well. Simon is scared in a way that's different from Rick. With Rick Kieren always risked the fact that if a certain line is crossed, he'd get up and flee from the room. Or choose to pretend that the last half hour never even happened. And Kieren was always so careful. Simon is scared like a volcano eruption, like an animal locked in a cage, and Kieren knows he's not afraid of him, but he can't help but feel like he's going to get hit by the shock wave. He settles for wrapping his arms around his chest. "I don’t want to leave, Simon," he finally says. At the time, Kieren thought Simon saw Gary with the Blue Oblivion, saw Pearl with her gun, saw the Parish Council, and decided once and for all that this town was not a place you can live in. But that wasn’t the reason, and Kieren wonders what it says about Simon, who's willing to go with his head in the wall against the whole world and trembles with fear of his family.

"They don’t have to know – I. Nothing's changed, right? I'll do what you said. They'll have no reason to suspect me." He's horribly tired, all of a sudden, he feels as though Simon (shaking, blown in the wind) could drag him to the other side of the world by the back of his coat. Simon's still – paralyzed? planted in place? And Kieren continues: "But I should have known," he says quietly. "It's my life. I – if it was my decision to stay I should’ve made it when I'm aware of everything. You can't just – keep stuff like that from me, Simon. It's my life." His eyes burn. He wants to scream, for a moment. He's swallowing down so much it's causing physical damage.

And then Simon straightens his back. His eyes go back to normal size and his mouth straightens to a thin like, and he takes one, two, three steps, until he's standing right in front of Kieren, and he wraps his fingers around his arm. "Of course you don’t have to leave, Kieren." He says, and it's the voice Kieren knows: let's go with our heads against the wall, let's make some noise, let's do some damage – "Of course not. We wouldn’t have stayed here if I'd thought…"

He doesn’t finish the sentence, but he closes his eyes, and Kieren thinks they're seeing the same picture: Pearl, with a gun, and Simon, preceding the bullet flying his way. The thing is that Simon didn’t know where that bullet would hit him. The thing is that Gary tried to make Jem kill Kieren. The thing is this town is completely whacked. The thing is that Maxine Martin tried to kill Amy and succeeded (He sees her, all the time. Amy. He imagines the look on her face. He _dreams_ about it. Once he started drawing it without paying attention, then tore the paper to shreds and started crying, couldn’t stop until Jem found him and wrapped her arms around him and told him he's scaring her).

Simon shakes his head. "Kieren, are you listening?" He doesn’t wait for an answer. "They're not threatening you," he sounds horribly calm, solid as a rock. He's completely different. "Because I'm not going to let them near you." Kieren rolls his eyes, and Simon ignores him, goes on: "No, listen. You need to understand. You're not alone here, okay? I don’t care if it's the psychos of this freaking ghost town or if it's the Prophet's toy soldiers, they're not coming near you. It'll be alright."

Kieren tips his head, swallows down a smile that threatens to emerge at the corners of his lips, eradicates the butterflies from his stomach. "Bullshit," he says. Simon raises his eyebrows, surprised, and Kieren finds himself smiling, after all. "It doesn’t change the fact that you should have told me," he says quietly. The thing is Kieren should be angry. And he is angry, he's furious. But he doesn’t want to drive Simon away from him. He doesn’t want Simon to go. He'd just – his day would be 150% harder, without Simon. Maybe if Amy was here – but she's not, and it is what it is. Love is probably always the same in this sense. Eventually you're always standing at the crossroad, and you always go with: I have no choice, I need you here. Kieren didn’t have the ability to select his friends so they wouldn’t be part of a terror organization and now he doesn’t have the ability to distance himself from the people he loves, and mainly he wants Simon Monroe to hug him and put his fingers through his hair and comfort him over how Simon Monroe is a dumb idiot, it's just unbelievable. He wants to say, _just say you're sorry. Don’t wait till I'm out the door. Just say it already._ He wants to say I told you so, but only a little bit.

"I know," Simon finally says. He integrates the fingers of his other hand with Kieren's, and Kieren could pull his hand back, but he decides to let him, for now. "I know." He swallows. "And you don’t need protection – not really." He smiles, tired and crooked. "You fought against Blue Oblivion and you beat it," he explains. "Sometimes I think back to it and – god, Kieren. You don’t need my protection. You can do anything."

Kieren never knows how to react when Simon talks about his wondrous abilities. But he thinks it's different this time – Simon's talking about Kieren the person, not about Kieren the miracle. Simon thinks Kieren is strong. He thinks Kieren can beat this town. "I don’t –"

"And I'm sorry." His smile becomes whole now, but he really does sound sorry, damn him, and Kieren closes his eyes and thinks of mutual trust. He wants to say, _how can I trust you now_ , but the truth is he trusts Simon no matter what. He wants to say: _Look at what happens because of false prophets. Look at the damage that's been caused. Look at where Amy is and where you are and where we are. Look._ But he doesn’t want to hurt Simon, and he doesn’t want to say things that he couldn’t take back. He doesn’t really know what to do with Simon right now. (It seems to him that he's sorry like Rick was sorry. Deep and true and out of a fear that grabs them from between the ribs).

"So I went to the city once or twice recently," Simon says suddenly.

Kieren nods his head. No shit.

Simon continues. "I was trying to get us passports." His voice is hoarse. He seems smaller, and Kieren fights off the urge to tell him that everything's alright. He can't stay mad. Simon has nothing to worry about. "I know you want to stay, but… just in case." He directs his look towards Kieren, and he doesn’t look sorry now (the thing with Simon is that he tortures himself over the mistakes he made but not over the lies he told. The thing is it's not very Christian of him).

Kieren opens his mouth to speak, then realizes something, and changes course. "Where did you get a photo of me?"

Simon looks surprised. "What?"

"You need a photograph of me from when I was alive, don’t you? Otherwise they wouldn’t let me leave the country. Where did you get a photo of me?"

Simon shrugs. "An recent photo with cover-up, contacts and a bit of Photoshop would do just fine as well."

"I don't have any recent photo." Kieren says cautiously.

Simon smiles. "So you think." Kieren opens his mouth to reprimand him, and Simon hurries to add, "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. We're not at that point yet." Kieren shakes his head with mistrust. Simon goes on: "And I could always steal a photo from the thousands of albums your mother has."

"Ha!" Kieren snickers. "She would’ve murdered you. She would’ve found you and she would’ve used violence and you would’ve regretted the day you were born."

Simon rolls his eyes. "But I'm beyond that phase of my life," and before Kieren manages an answer, "I thought you might like to come with me," a smile tugs at the edges of his lips, and he reaches out to touch Kieren again. "You know, to make sure the photo doesn’t come out too bad. We can sit somewhere later. You know, hang around. You can buy another pair of hipster boots –"

"You dare mock my clothing – what – have you looked at your coat lately - ?"

"What do you say?"

"That next time you get me an ID without telling me I'll stop talking to you."

"For how long?"

"At least five hours."

Simon passes his hand along Kieren's arm. "That's like eternity."

Kieren rolls his eyes, but he's smiling, and some of the unease in his stomach is gone. He feels lighter. And he agrees. He learned history just like everyone else did. Too much had happened on European soil to people who could not escape on time. Amy said they can smash the clock in pieces but the truth is their future is frighteningly unstable. The truth is he doesn’t know if the situation will deteriorate and how much and when. The truth is he's no longer a citizen of the United Kingdom, and he doesn’t trust his country, and he doesn’t trust the Prophet, and there's no one that will protect them (Amy said, at the time: "Since we're dead we can say we have citizenship in heaven. Offer people to marry 'em so they can become citizens as well. Charge for it. Make a fortune." And Kieren laughed in a way that made people stare at them). The fact that you're brave doesn’t mean you have to be an idiot.

Kieren leans forward, and kisses him. When he backs away he says: "I'm paying for the passports." Simon opens his mouth to argue, and Kieren kisses him again. "I worked for almost a year, remember? I've got money. You lived in a commune."

"It's not exactly a commune –"

"Uh-huh."

"I can afford –"

"I'm paying."

Simon rolls his eyes. "Fine."

He's the one to close the distance between them this time.

*

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr right [here!](http://briefly-be.tumblr.com/)


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